MOUNT PROSPECT, Ill. — A four-legged member of the counseling team at the high school in a Chicago suburb waits patiently, as a crush of students fills the halls. Her tail wags with the first pat, then another and another.

‘‘Puppy! Ohhh, puppy dog!’’ one teenager chants, as he affectionately tousles the ears of the 18-month-old golden retriever. Junie began her role as a ‘‘therapy dog’’ at Prospect High School four months ago.

It is just one of a number of ways high schools across the nation try to address what some call an epidemic of stressed-out students.

Advertisement

Some schools now offer yoga classes or teach relaxation techniques in the classroom. Others, from California to Minnesota and New Jersey, are instituting homework-free nights or are offering a bit of free time between classes — the equivalent of recess for teens.

In Maine, at least two high schools have converted classrooms into ‘‘wellness rooms’’ staffed by volunteer professionals who offer massage therapy and other stress-reducing treatments for students, with parental permission.

The idea is to help them slow down and cope with their problems in an overpacked, 24-7 world, where many students stay up late to finish homework and fall asleep with their phones in their hands.

‘‘Things cycle for them so quickly. So it’s hard for them to be able to develop the patience, or the ability to think something through and to realize that it may take some time for it to get resolved,’’ says Douglas Berg, a social worker at Prospect High, where he and other staff are seeing more students hospitalized with anxiety and panic attacks related to stress.

Some might question whether a dog in the school corridors, or a 20-minute break, addresses the deeper issues at hand. But many school officials say they have to do what they can to alleviate the growing pressure to achieve. That pressure, they say, has only been heightened by the commonly held belief that it is tougher than ever for a young person to make it in this economy.

Advertisement

More than ever, a college degree is viewed as a must. So more students are taking college courses in high school, and even more are enrolling in rigorous ‘‘advanced placement,’’ classes to try to earn college credit. Add year-round sports and after-school jobs and volunteering, as a way to bolster the college application, and many students say they have little time for anything else.

The intensity of school has become so great, says one mom in Paoli, Pa., that she and her family have dubbed senior year of high school ‘‘the crying year.’’

‘‘When does a child get to be a child anymore?’’ said Carol Meerschaert.

Abbie Kaplan, a junior at the Boston Latin School — a public high school that requires students to take an exam for entry — knows what she means.

On a scale of 1 to 10, she places her stress level at a pretty steady 9. She regularly has four hours of homework a night, some done before swim practice. She eats dinner around 9:30 p.m., then finishes the rest of her homework and generally goes to bed at 11:30. Then she’s up at 6 a.m. so she can be at school by 7:45.

Advertisement

She calls her hectic schedule ‘‘the new normal.’’

‘‘You keep telling yourself that it will prepare you for the future,’’ Kaplan says. ‘‘It’s just sort of how it is.’’

She, too, has had anxiety attacks related to her workload, she says. And some parents say school shootings, including the recent massacre in Newtown, Conn., only worsen the stress.

‘‘My son came home from school and said, ‘I’m really worried this could happen at our school,’ ’’ says Jane Robertson, a mother of a 16-year-old in Belfast, Maine. She’s also a chiropractor, who helped start one of the wellness rooms in the area. The first one opened in Camden, Maine, after a spate of suicides more than 10 years ago, she said.

Overall, a recent national survey of adolescent mental health found that about 8 to 10 percent of students ages 13 to 18 have an anxiety disorder. And of those teens, only 18 percent received mental health care, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.